Ali's Wedding

Ali’s Wedding

After a white lie which spirals out of control, a neurotic, naïve and musically gifted Muslim cleric’s eldest son must follow through with an arranged marriage, except he is madly in love with an Australian born Lebanese girl.

Ali’s Wedding is an affectionate and entertaining story about family, duty and love in multicultural Australia. Depicting the lives of a Muslim family in Melbourne with authenticity and warmth, Ali’s family share the same dilemmas as every family. Parents who want the best for their children and children who are trying to work out their place in the world. Based on the life of Osamah Sami who also stars in the film.

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Osamah Sami

Co-Writer

Osamah Sami is an award-winning Australian actor / writer / comedian, born in war-torn Iran to Iraqi parents. He is also a failed cricketer and struggling Muslim.

He has over a dozen theatre, film and TV credits as an actor, including playing the lead opposite Claudia Karvan in the Tony Ayres directed telemovie Saved. In 2016, his work in Melbourne Theatre Company’s I Call My Brothers earned him a Green Room Award nomination for best lead actor. Osamah also played the title role in Saddam the Musical, which got him deported from the US, having been mistaken for a terrorist.

As a writer, he is behind the story and screenplay of Ali’s Wedding. He also created the web series Two Refugees and a Blonde and the SBS commissioned eight-part comedy Baghdad to the Burbs. His next films are Be Less Beautiful and the feature animation When the Birds Aren’t Free to be Buried.

His critically acclaimed memoir Good Muslim Boy was Highly Commended at the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards and the Winner of the NSW Premier’s Literary Award.

Jeffrey Walker

Director:

Jeffrey Walker started his career as an actor in the Australian film industry at the age of seven. He was a lead in many different series, totaling more than 200 episodes. In 1997 Jeffrey won the Australian Film Institute's Best Young Actor Award for his title role in The Wayne Manifesto.

Making short films on weekends and acting during the week, teenage Jeffrey garnered the attention of prolific television producer Jonathan M. Shiff, who offered him the opportunity to train under him as a producer and director. Having completed school, Jeffrey commenced his training, and shortly after became one of Australia's youngest ever television directors at nineteen.

For over a decade, Jeffrey helmed major Australian television productions shown domestically and around the world, including Chris Lilley's Angry Boys for HBO, Rake, H2O: Just Add Water, the Emmy nominated Dance Academy and the Jack Irish TV movie starring Guy Pearce. Jack Irish won Jeffrey the AACTA award for Best Direction in Television, making him the youngest ever recipient. He has been nominated for this award a further three times. In addition, he has won four Australian Directors Guild awards in the past five years, and received a further three nominations for his various comedic and dramatic works.

Jeffrey began directing in the US in 2012 and so far has directed episodes across eleven TV series. These include Modern Family, Backstrom, Raising Hope, Bones, Mixology, Rake (US) and the critically acclaimed Difficult People, where he directed all episodes and executive produced alongside Amy Poehler.

In 2014, Jeffrey directed the prestigious BBC mini-series, Banished, written by multi-BAFTA and Emmy winner, Jimmy McGovern and released internationally in 2015. Jeffrey received nominations for the finale episode of the series in both the AACTA and the Australian Directors Guild awards.

Ali’s Wedding is his debut feature film. His second feature, Dance Academy – The Comeback, is currently in post-production. Jeffrey has directed over ninety hours of television, two feature films and is thirty-four-years-old.